


3 Idiots, 2 Bikes, 1 Kayak and 275 Miles to Fish Creek

by Crooks7



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Family, Other, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-01-27 20:06:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1720931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crooks7/pseuds/Crooks7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years ago my brother, sister and I decided it would be a good idea to bike from Chicago, IL to Door County, WI. What proceed to unfold was one of the most ridiculous series of events. We were questioned by police concerning the theft of our own kayak, were homeless in downtown Fish Creek for a night, and almost murdered in a Psycho-esque off the beaten path motel.</p><p>This is a true story in its entirety.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. James

This is a story about inhibitions. Or the lack there of, surprisingly so without the presence of alcohol. After four years of flying high at a state university, wondering how the hell I got stuck at the lowly Illinois State University as I watched my high school peers travel cross country to the likes of Harvard, Yale and even University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, I thought I knew about a lack of inhibitions with the copious amount of liquor I drank during that time.

This story is about five days. Over the course of these five days I stopped giving a shit. Sorry to be brash, but I will be exactly that as I recount every moment of me not giving a shit.

As my brother, sister and I rode our bikes around that state of Wisconsin in a planned sequence of organized chaos, I was as free as I’ve ever felt. And this happened without a drop of liquor, omitting the night we were almost murdered of course.

The story in it's essence starts far before that fateful week. It actually started in a college dorm room. 1120 Wilkins hall at Illinois State University in Normal, IL.

I sat reading the last two hundred pages of The Hunger Games in a single sitting. This of course is not possible without and insane amount of tears raining on your face. Seriously, thirty minutes in and my mascara looked like a promo for American Horror Story.

My roommate, who was normally a bitch, was actually kind in the moment she saw me wallowing in my fears of what would happen to fictional characters. Her mouth dropped and she stood there frozen. I, finally realizing her presence, looked over forcing her to see her own reflection in my tear laced eyes. 

"A-are you o-okay" she stammered more out of fear for her own safety than any concern for my well being.

My sorrowful expression shifted from that of mourning to embarrassment and finally, wait _why the fuck do I care what she thinks of me?_

I just shook my head and tilted the book towards her hopefully allowing her to get the message. She didn't respond, just slowly backed out of the room but she didn't come back for a solid 48 hours. It was fantastic.

My point is that The Hunger Games was a book that inspired me. Not too dramatic, like a desire to take down a dystopian society or wrongful government overreach or stopping the abuse of children. Nothing like that. In truth, The Hunger Games inspired me to do one thing. It made me want to go off onto the wild and kill shit.

But in general, being a bit of a wuss I didn't want anything that would fight back. Nothing along the lines of bears, wolves or the careers of District 2.

This is how the idea started and it spread like wildfire. The first time I mentioned it to my brother we were discussing what songs I would play at his funeral after he died tragically attempting to kayak down the Mississippi River. He wanted to bring along a couple cases of beer that would surely sink him.

"James how would you feel about going all Grizzly Man on some state park in Wisconsin?" He had just decided that Kansas's Dust in the Wind should be playing as we pour his ashes....well into the wind and it was time for a change in subject. Honestly, he's not the most original person on the world.

"That depends."

"On what?"

"On what the hell you're talking about."

I started to explain my dream of venturing into the wild and unlike Alexander Supertramp, not dying on some abandoned bus in the middle of Alaska.

"Well we definitely won't be going to Alaska." He responded. "I'd rather die on a nice beach somewhere." That moment cemented the fact that he would be zero help throughout this whole ordeal.

The original plan entailed being able to hunt, trap and fish on federal land such as a state park. We would bring sleeping bags, some spare fishing line and in James's words, "a big fucking Bowie knife." Now I'll be the first one to say it, if that original plan actually went through we would have starred in National Lampoon's remake of Into The Wild. Yes, including the part where we died.

But I barreled full steam ahead. I found the email address to the head of Wisconsin State Parks and sent him an obnoxious email. Asterisks are the lies I told.

Dear Dr. Richardson,

My name is Carmen Crooks*. I am currently a student at Illinois State University studying towards a Masters in Environmental Studies**. For my Masters thesis I wanted to study the minimalist environmental effects of low impact backpacking***. Our team**** will be completely living off the land for a period no longer than seven days and was inquiring about the use of permits for small game hunting and fishing on both state and federal land.

Thank you for your time,

Carmen Crooks

*Looking back I find it odd that I felt uncomfortable using my first name...but last name was fair game (Carmen was my Spanish name in high school).

**I don't know if this Masters degree even exists. One Google search of ISU would reveal it certainly doesn't exist there.

***I don't even want to talk about this sentence

****'Our team' was code for me and my idiot brother.

Overall, this is the sort of email that I never expected a response to. Maybe a cough in the form of an email: Hunting permits $45. It was a shot in the dark.

Instead, what I got back was a fucking monster. This professional, possibly lonely, gentleman took it upon himself to guide a young Carmen through her Masters studies delving into every intricacy of Wisconsin and Federal hunting and fishing codes.

His response was massive. I sat there skimming through it for twenty solid minutes. And I'm not going to lie, I gave up on the entire idea of Grizzly Manning the wild of Northern Wisconsin after actually reading the first two paragraphs.

I never even looked at the email again. Sorry poor, lonely head of Wisconsin State Parks, I'm an asshole.


	2. Girl

After avoiding  possible prosecution for lying my ass off to a public employee (is this a real thing?), I decided to forget the trip for two solid years.

That was until I saw college coming to a close during the Fall semester of my senior year, the idea of real life was far too frightening to consider. So why not rejuvenate the plan that could get me killed in the wild of some God forsaken place before I had to deal with that shit?! Perfect plan is perfect.

The idea had morphed since then and James was inspired by a cross state bike trip some of his friends were doing through Iowa. It was a highly organized and reputable trip. But also expensive. And if there's anything us Crooks kids hate more than reputable and organized, it's expensive.

We'd plan our own bike trip in the week leading up to our yearly family vacation in Door County, WI and would bike all 275 miles there. Sure there were the issues of not having bikes, never having ridden one more than ten miles and lets not forget the part about not giving a shit I mentioned earlier. My bike enthusiast aunt and uncle kept talking about something called commitment. We still don't know what they meant by that.

The planning stage started over the winter and we starting with the route. We found some legitimate bike paths tracing the east side of the state edging along Lake Michigan. Like REAL bike paths! These of course were contrary to the paths my mother thought we were going to be using...the mother fucking interstate highway system! Yes mom, we're going to take a couple road bikes and just jam up highway 6 until we get hit by a mack truck. Come to think of it, that would get me out of the whole "real life" thing that was coming immediately after graduation.

After starting in LaGrange Park, IL our nightly destinations would travel through Racine, Port Washington, Manitowoc, Sturgeon Bay and finally Fish Creek, Door County. This time I didn't bother getting an expert's opinion on the trip. There would be no backing down from this regardless of logic and reasonable safety concerns.

The second hurdle of our planning stage was possibly one of the top priorities of a biking trip. Getting bikes. I know it sounds simplistic, but let me warn you that the last bike I rode was bright pink and about 30 inches off the ground. And the last time I rode that I was drunk and had just graduated high school.

I started asking around about rode bikes, specifically those that were anything but pink. I had a friend down in Joliet that offered me her old one. Her description was chaste: red, old, filthy and kind of a piece of shit. PERFECT.

I started riding it and let me say that I was only hit by one car. I was riding to the gym and as I crossed a side street, a car came out of no where skidding against my left leg. I was able to stay up just long enough to give them my middle finger before dashing myself across the pavement. Worth it.

My brother was able to get a bike from a friend and it was about this time that my young sister decided to join us for the trip. Her reasoning was flawless and she said something that neither my brother nor myself could hold a glass to when we asked her.

"Hey do you wanna come on this bike trip with James and me?"

"Eh, why the fuck not?"

Done.

See my sister was someone who had already learned what I would soon learn over the course of this trip. Who gives a shit? If you're not who someone else wants you to be...fuck 'em, they're not your friends anyway.

We call her Girl. As the youngest of all the Crooks siblings, she was the one most picked on. She was also the one that was treated like a five year old until...well personally I still think she's treated like a five year old by my parents. Not many chores, easily getting out of responsibilities. And the standard:

"Your older siblings had to wait until they were in high school to get a cellphone, what are you ten? Close enough".

So James decided it would be funny to start calling her Girl, instead of Alison. Because in his words:

"You are too insignificant for a real name."

Amazingly this stuck. Although it took a year or two for my parents to start referring to her as Girl. It was at that moment her heart was crushed, soul blacked and she transitioned into the completely (unique?) insane person we know today.

Girl is actually the reason we have a family dog. She started begging for a dog around fourth grade. This started as quick comments about neighbor dogs and ended with her printing off pictures of the world's cutest puppies and lacing my parent's office supplies with them.

My father would go to work and unload his laptop, legal documents, pictures of the most adorable fucking puppies...it was insane. This went on for EIGHT years. Seriously, the pure determination of this ten year old was borderline horrifying. Thank god she's never been determined to sell drugs or start her own prostitution ring. Although sometimes I think she has been doing those behind our backs for years.

It was finally for her eighth grade graduation present, my parents gave her a book called, "How to Train your Dog". Girl sat there staring at it thinking my parents were mocking her continual wishes for a dog. When the truth hit her she started sobbing. All over her damn graduation cake too, it was disgusting.

We got Bella about a year later and aside from the fact that this little nine pound dog thinks she's a Rottweiler picking a fight with any dog no less than three times the size of her, she's okay I guess. Alright, she's fucking adorable.

It was both James and my last semester of college as Girl was in her last semester of high school. I was student teaching, James was applying to medical schools and studying for the MCAT and Girl, well Girl was a senior in high school, she was doing absolute shit.

Considering on the trip we would be riding 40 - 60 miles a day, there was training that had to take place. I would bike about 20 miles plus another 30 minutes of lifting about 3 times a week. My siblings on the other hand did their best to not accomplish anything.

Girl stated flatly, "Eh."

While James elaborated, "Training is cheating." Alrighty then!


	3. Day 1

The middle of July was finally rolling around and I was still stuck in school. Summer school that is. Teaching a bunch of 8th graders on what the hell a fraction is. Seriously? Stop peeing your pants it's literally a division sign. That's it. Stop crying (if you're wondering I'm a former high school teacher now, I was done with that shit after a year, let alone the two I served).

 

The morning of the start of the trip, Girl and James would begin in the morning and I would follow in a car after summer school ended. That was the thing. My eccentric mother, the same one that thought we were going to be biking up US 6 all 275 miles was the same one that insisted we brought a car along in case of emergency. I'm sure that it had nothing to do with the fact that we also dragged along the massive, thirty pound kayak strapped to the roof. The same one SHE wanted to bring and the one SHE didn't want to learn how to strap to the roof of her car. All coincidence I'm sure.

 

So instead of three of us on bikes transversing our way along the Midwest, it would just be the two of us being awesome, while whomever accidently overate at breakfast was driving the car with a ten foot, bright red kayak glued to the top.

 

Due to my summer school boss being an incredible person, I was able to ditch the last two days in order to start the trip on time. On my final day I drove home and James and Girl would be halfway to Wisconsin by then. Well that's what I fully expected to happen...I think. Okay I might have predicted this outcome.

 

See, in my loving brother's declaration of "Training is Cheating!" He never actually bothered to ride the bike he borrowed. You know, take it out for a test ride. See if it ACTUALLY FUCKING WORKS!

 

No he waited until six miles from home,thirty minutes in to realize that the tires were no good. And by figuring out, yes one blew and he landed on his face. I wish I had been there.

 

Mommy swung by and picked them up. And as I drove into the driveway I was greeted with a lovely scene of James trying to wrestle an inflated tire onto his front wheel. Like, I'm no bike expert, but that was definitely not the right way. I felt like someone debating a climate change denier, "Now sir, I don't know the exact degree to which your facts are wrong, but on a scale of 1 to Andrew Wakefield, your doctorate is mostly likely being revoked."

 

After hoisting the kayak onto the roof and tying it down a decision was made to skip the first half of the first leg of the trip. Strike one on the trip didn't feel so bad as it could have. We were still going to ride our bikes.

 

With the car packed we decided to drive the car to the first rendezvous point, just over the Wisconsin border. Unloaded in a seedy stepford wife like area and headed down a path to possibly our own destruction.

 

Over the course of 2.5 hours we managed 17 miles. What. The. Actual. Fuck. The original plan was to ride an average of 50 miles a day and considering the two idiots didn't train, we couldn't be out there for 6 hours plus! This became more apparent with James as we rode that first stretch.

 

We found the first bike path and were only 20 minutes in.

 

"I gotta pee!"

 

"What?" I watched only partially horrified as he launched himself off his bike and into the field jogging a few yards out before pissing.

 

"What would you do if I just killed someone right now."

 

It was a game we played. No, this isn't some sort of Texas Chainsaw Massacre cult family crap. We watched the show Dexter in college together weekly. It started many conversations on how to properly murder people.

 

I shrugged even though he couldn't see me, "First I'd just be impressed that you were able to kill someone while peeing. One handed I presume?"

 

He nodded.

 

"Well, first off if anyone saw us, we'd kill them too."

 

"Alright." He smiled. He was like my sick mentor.

 

"Then throw their body in the brush and get the fuck out. They'll find the body in a few days and no one can really pin us to this location."

 

"Brilliant!" James walked over to me and patted me on the shoulder. It would have been fine except for the fact he turned the pat into a bit of a drag down my sleeve. Which again, fine except for what he was just doing with that hand.

 

Without another word James got back on his bike and rode off. I would love to say we finished our ride, riding off into the sunset, but in truth we just rode into a few ghettos, industry and a one armed man with a pit bull ready to strike.

 

Honestly that last acquaintance would be my fault. We had just passed through a small town that smelled of homemade potpies and prostitution when we hit a quaint residential area. By quaint I mean one side of the four lane highway were shingles in disarray and large No Trespassing signs nailed to each door and the other a chain link fence with beyond it a wasteland of trucks and old machinery parts. Real class act this town. The air alone was enough to choke on.

 

As James and I rode along the sidewalk, cracked and disjointed from years of tree roots up turning them, our pace slowed considerably. He was tiring due to his lack in ability of riding a bicycle and I was unknowingly slowly creeping up.

 

All in one moment James jerked his bike to the side narrowly avoiding a lifted piece of sidewalk titled nearly six inches off the ground. I hit it full force and due to the unfortunate nature of my bike, my handlebars were not low enough to clear them. My left leg slammed to the solid metal piece connecting the two handles and I went end over end landing well onto a stranger's front lawn.

 

I lay dazed and confused as my brother doubled back to check my injures the only way a brother can.

 

"What the fuck?! Learn how to ride a bike recently?"

 

I was still on the ground refusing to lift my head off the ground. But when I finally did, it was not my brother hovering over me that was interesting but the man standing just inside a screen door not ten feet away. The same man whose property I was currently napping in.

 

The man didn't say a word, but his pit bull said enough. His right hand gripped hard around the dog's leash as it attempted to silently rip itself away. I remember thinking how the dog would break away soon enough unless he got another hand on it. That's when I saw that the man didn't have a second hand to spare, just a smooth stump capable of little. I bolted upwards and without a word got on my bike. James looked confused. I never trust people with single appendages. After all, Jamie Lannister was never good even with a solid gold hand.

 

The remainder of the ride consisted of getting lost...twice, my brother crying about about his sore muscles, and me about my knee that had grown to twice its normal size.

 

We were picked up I'm a bankrupted gas station as the sun was going down. Seriously, ten more minutes and we would have never been found.

 

It was finally time to get some sleep.

 

 


	4. Giving Up (in the best possible fashion)

The problem with having a ten foot kayak tagging along on a trip is the inability to store it anywhere. As I mentioned before, Racine is not the greatest neighborhood and I wasn't sure of the conversion rate of plastic floatation devices to grams of crack. Probably not much, but who knows? There could be a dealer with a nice summer home.

 

Naturally we had to get this monster of a boat into our hotel room. The overall size wasn't a big deal, just the length. As we dragged the kayak as quietly as possible down the hallway of the hotel, we soon discovered that no amount of maneuvering would actually allow us to slip it into the room.

 

A Plan B was quickly established and to everyone's surprise that plan didn't entail saying: "Eh fuck it!" I thought one of us was going to end up sleeping in the kayak.

 

Heading back into the room, James started unscrewing the window frame. Luckily we were on the first floor and were capable of doing something utterly ridiculous.

 

Ten minutes later the three of us were jogging alongside the hotel, ten foot kayak in hand, before sliding it into our hotel room through the open window. It took up half the already tiny room.

 

A solid meal at Qdoba and a moronic bird watching movie starring Jack Black later we found ourselves ensuring the mirrors located on every square inch of wall were not in fact two way mirrors.

 

"See in order to check if something is two way, you put a pen or pencil up to it." Professor Jimmy was explaining the intricacies of things he knew nothing about. "If there is no visible space between the reflection and the tip of the pen, its a normal mirror!" He was so fucking proud of himself.

 

"Ummm Jimmy. What the fuck?" Girl was holding a pen to the mirror and was visibly panicked. The tip was a clear half inch from the mirror, "Are we staying in a murder house?"

 

James shrugged, "Or maybe I got it backwards. You do want some space."

 

"Or maybe they know we know and we're going to DIE tonight!"

 

James's eyes widened for a second, " This might all be true."

 

This was the first of two nights when I thought we were going to be murdered.

 

The next morning we snuck down into the complementary breakfast. We had to be inconspicuous due to the fact that in the coming hour we would once again be dismantling our hotel room window.

 

By nine o'clock we were all packed except for the elephant still in the room. Girl unscrewed the window as we started dragging it out.

 

Picture this. A hotel just at the bottom of a small hill surrounded by a small shopping district and beyond that a city hit hard by the crack cocaine uprising of the 1980's.

 

Now there are three kids dragging a massive kayak out of a window of a first floor hotel room. A window that was not supposed to come off.

 

Seem suspicious? We thought so, and so did the Racine police department.

 

Not thirty seconds after we mangled the kayak out of the window and stumbled our way into the parking lot did a cop ride up on a motorcycle. We froze.

 

James was at the bow of the boat and started to tug for us to continue. Girl just cursed under her breath. Innocent or not I'm surprised none of us started booking it with the cop staring us down behind his oversized, extra dark sunglasses.

 

"Good morning." The cop was still sitting on his motorcycle, hands folded in his lap.

 

"Morning officer." James, always the suck up.

 

"What have you got there?"

 

Instead of running, the three of us were able to get the kayak to the car and set it down.

 

James walked over to the cop. As the oldest of us, he is forever in charge of keeping us from getting arrested. "It's a kayak, sir." No fucking way. "We're just bringing it up to Door County."

 

The cop looked like he was about to laugh, say likely story and/or bring out a set of cuffs. That was until Girl and I got out the straps used to attach the kayak to the car. The cop saw this and smiled, " So that's your boat?" No it's Dick Cheney's. The cop spit, "Alright. Have a good one." And that was it.

 

Fun fact: if you act like you own the place, cops won't fuck with you. Funner fact: don't walk into Justin Bieber's house with this philosophy. You'll get your ass beaten by a hulking black guy Bieber hired to make him feel like a thug.

 

Finally ready to head out, we drove to our next biking spot. There was supposed to be a trail, there had to be a trail, there was just no fucking trail. There's nothing more demoralizing than getting lost on a bunch of country roads and hitting dead end after dead end. I especially liked the dead end with the massive sign in big, bolded letters: NO TURN AROUND. Well what the fuck are we supposed to do, sir? Transverse through your farmland giving you a hearty wave? We're from Chicago! We make our own roads apparently.

 

We eventually ended up in an abandoned church parking lot. All them country folk must have figured out that if they were going to give a big middle finger to the poor politically, they should just stop faking it every Sunday.

 

James continued to complain about his sore muscles, I whined about my knee that wasn't exactly bending in that moment and Girl, having done nothing the day before, had a severe sore throat. Wtf?

 

It was a group decision to scrap the entire bike trip. Yes, ten minutes in the presence of religion and we wanted to give up on all our goals. This all felt eerily familiar.

 

We spent the next hour driving up to Port Washington. Due to the time of day and our room not being available as of yet, we took the kayak to the beach and used the object that almost got us arrested hours earlier.

 

Three sets of soaking clothes and one unionized attack of seagulls later, we drove to our hotel. Okay, when I say hotel, I mean motel. And when I say motel, I mean a random shack with six rooms in the middle of nowhere. I had seen this movie before and one thing was for sure, I would not be taking a shower...because this motel came right out of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

 

 


	5. The Driftwood Motel

Our first hint that death was possibly imminent should have been that this motel was called The Driftwood Motel. What kind of lodging facility names their motel after rotting pieces of wood?

 

This was ignored because it was cheap, sounded like a cute little Ma and Pa business, and who am I kidding it was cheap.

 

The second warning sign was the fact that we drove out of town to find this place...way out of town. At first, we thought it was just off the beaten track. Then we figured it was just around the corner, just over the next hill. Then we assumed we were lost, for over twenty minutes.

 

When the three of us finally spotted the motel in the sea barren land, we were fairly certain we were about to be murdered.

 

It was old farming land that people had forgotten about. Old stalks of corn that no longer stood, just old remnants of older skeletons. Everything was rotting for miles.

 

The Driftwood sat on its own lot. No paving to be spoken of, just one dirt road leading to a square mile of a rock filled parking lot. The center of that lot was a one story red brick building that was just long enough for six rooms. On the end, a piece jutted out with a small OFFICE sign creaking as it swung with the wind. And beyond that a gated in area with lawn chairs and a small garden. How they managed to grow anything in that wasteland I'll never know.

 

"Turn around, no!" Girl started shouting in the back seat. "This can't be the place."

 

James continued driving, pointing up at the statuesque sign holding up a cheap piece of wood with The Driftwood scrawled on it. Fuck.

 

Our impending doom was coming closer each second and all I could do was whimper from the back seat, "We're gonna get murdered aren't we?"

 

James eyed the scene again, "Yup."

 

There were three run down Chevy's sitting out front and here rolls up a four door sedan with a ten foot, bright red kayak on top. Three kids remove themselves from the confines of the car.

 

Out of all the rooms to pull up in front of, we accidentally parked right in front of a man standing just inside his room. The main door was open, the screen door closed. He was staring at us.

 

An older man in his late forties, early fifties that had not aged well. He smoked a cigarette blowing smoke through the screen towards us. He didn't say a word.

 

Taking a moment he wiped something from his hand onto his already filthy pants. I assume he would have found a cleaner spot on the hem of his shirt if only he was wearing one.

 

As I was staring at one of The Driftwood's finest, an older woman was walking up the small rotting porch that lined the doors. I suppose this wood was the reasoning behind the motel name.

 

The woman stopped, looked at us, then turned to the man behind the screen door, "Who are these people?"

 

He shrugged as his eyes went back to us.

 

The older woman took the lead, "Can I help you?" Her tone was curious. It wasn't a passive inquiry of whether or not she could be of any assistance, rather it was a question regarding a possible homicide that would take place if she has to go the least bit out of her way. I stayed in the car and let James take the lead. If she killed anyone, best not make it an easy triple homicide.

 

Girl and I sat frozen in the car as James disappeared into the office.

 

"How long until we assume he's never coming back out?" Fair question.

 

"Let's give him seven minutes." My lucky number and enough time to let him check in while not enough time for this old lady to rally the troops.

 

James made it out alive and we got into our room and let me tell you, The Driftwood got its name not just from the floorboards on the patio, but pretty much every piece of wood covering the place.

 

The walls, while wooden in nature, were hidden behind a thick layer of laminate. A small mirror was tossed to the side of a television from the days of the first color TV with a small ashtray that looked as though it was used recently.

 

The bathroom was two steps deep and a step wide as there was no bath. Instead, just a single stall shower with a drain cover large enough for someone crawl through.

 

Probably the worst part were the doors. This tiny room and there were three doors in the first two feet of the room. The main entrance, and one on each of the walls leading to the adjacent rooms. One door that led to Smokie next door.

 

James ran his hand over the frame of the side doors. There were no locks. He opened the door. Thankfully there was another door on the other side, but there was a second handle on this second door. If we wanted to, we could have popped our heads into Smokie's room and asked the guy for a light.

 

The kayak that night was our best friend. We decided not to leave it in the parking lot. We dragged it into the room. This room, being even smaller than the last barely held the kayak. But it ended up being the perfect fit as it acted as a lock for the two doors as well as a barricade for the main door.

 

So there we sat, in mostly silence, laying on the two beds with the matching (possibly mold infested) comforters. Three kids, in a back alley motel room with a ten foot kayak ensuring their safety or at least inhibiting a possible death.

 

The TV had five channels and we managed to catch back to back episodes of The Office before going to sleep.  James took the bed by the door as Girl and I shared the one by the bathroom. I was shoved to the side closest to the bathroom. I was horrified and here's why.

 

There was a movie that came out in 2007 starring Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson about a couple that stops at a motel, hangs out for a bit before getting murdered. Serious stuff guys.

 

There is a scene where Luke and Kate have locked themselves in their room (sans kayak I might add) and are essentially freaking out.

 

The camera cuts to the bathroom as the carpet suddenly lifts into the air as a trap door is revealed and some backwater hillbilly comes out with a hunting knife.

 

That human size shower drain continuously crept into my mind that night. I kept wondering if Smokie had a direct line to our room. Would he get a discount on his weekly rate for gutting us? I got a solid three hours that night listening for the shifting of either metal grating in the bathroom or the kayak by the door.

  
We were packed and gone by nine am. We had to wait for the office to open. Having cancelled our third night hotel we headed straight up to Door County. Sure we didn't have a place to stay, but we did have a kayak? Honestly, I was never completely positive what the fuck was going on.


	6. The Island (No Jack, We Don't Have To Go Back!)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lost reference anyone?

After three and a half days, and yes technically 275 miles covered, we finally rolled into Fish Creek, Door County.

Unbelievably, we still had a pair of bikes and a bright red kayak. Personally I thought we would have lost one, a few or even all of them.

It was around lunch so we stopped in at the local bar on Main street, Bayside Tavern. Grabbing a burger and some fries we tried to throw around our money in a way that signaled we weren't as homeless as we indeed were.

It was nice to be surrounded by humanity for a few brief moments. Families sat at tables, small children in booster seats and a few guys that stubbled in off the street to have a beer at one in the afternoon. Fuck it, they're on vacation. For a short half hour we were among the people. We blended into the culture. The check came and we decided we never wanted that feeling again.

The bar lighting was dim despite the sun outside and when we stepped back out into the real world it finally struck us that we were all alone in a part of the country that we've never experienced without our parents.

Fish Creek, Door County is a place that my siblings and I have been going since we were born. There was a year we vacationed in some alternate location that by the way my mother talks about it was a shack surrounded by horrific circumstances that only poor vacation planning can come about by.

If you're looking for a vacation spot where you can sit and get drunk for five days while simultaneously entertaining children, let me tell you! Fish Creek, get on it.

But now the three of us stood outside Bayside without our parents aka an unlimited supply of beer money, let alone a fridge. Panic started to set.

"What if we took the kayak and found a beach to sleep on?" James was always so idealistic with his terrible ideas. But as our big brother Girl and I are required to follow him until one of us lands in the hospital, which ironically would happen the very next day.

What do you need for a proper cookout on a possibly dangerous and most likely illegal campout? Cheap hot dogs and fire starters.

Stopping by the general store next door I got a glimpse of Mr. Helsinki's Wine Bar on the second floor. My sister wasn't 21 yet and so a vision sprung to mind of James and me on the beach, each with a bottle of wine, drunk. Girl would babysit and answer any and all questions regarding the trespassing of private beaches. This dream was only strengthened as James threw down the cheapest package of hot dogs I've ever seen. I would definitely need to be drunk to consume those.

Sadly, we ended up passing on the liquor for fear of dehydration and death. After all, one of those issues was avoidable if we passed on the alcohol. The other? Well we've avoided death multiple times thus far on the trip...

Packing up the kayak, we abandoned the car on a random side street. The bikes hung from the back ready to be stolen, so we backed the car into a tree making it not impossible, but hopefully people on vacation would be too lazy to steal them.

We had an interesting time finding a boat launch, so we slipped the kayak around a fenced in community. Hey! Stupid rich people! A bunch of dumbass kids just treated your property with respect and used your boat launches appropriately! Seriously, if you've ever been to Fish Creek you’ve probably never seen a cop. In all the years we've come to Door County we have only seen a handful of cops and about five or six black people. Those two statistics are completely unrelated, I'm not racist.

The paddle out was a rollercoaster of expectations. At first, we're only going up. Would we be able to camp out here? No one would bother us right? We would have some fun. Then the coaster leveled off. Is this going to be worth it if we end up being murdered? If we run out of food will I be the one eaten first? The important questions.

The horizon rose and subsequently lowered as the three of us fought between paddling, splashing and general skirmishes. Girl sat in the storage area traditionally set aside for shoes and carry ons, so no change there. James sat in front, so it was my job behind him not to collide paddles. But if you look at it another way, as a little sister is was absolutely my job to assault his paddle.

It took over forty five minutes with moments of pure confidence and others in which we were certain we would sink. After all three people were not meant for a two person kayak.

The island creeped ever closer and the horror slowly dawned on us.

"Is that a flag?" Girl asked pointing off to the side of the island.

Sure enough there was an American flag just gently blowing, just enough to see.

"So...who was it that claimed this was an uninhabited isle?" I used my formal lingo in an attempt to accentuate my annoyance.

I watched James shrug, never even stopping with his paddle, "Eh, I never made a statement of fact. It was more of an educated guess based on no actual knowledge."

Our fear was confirmed once the cabin came into full view. There was a strong disgruntled sigh from the group.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck" Girl moaned. It was a perfect description of how we all felt. All of our hopes of camping out and being murdered on a beach were dashed. And yet we continued on. Quick side note: I'm not sure the number of syllables Girl put into the 'u', but it was extensive.

We continued on and eventually beached ourselves upon the shore. The shore that was drastically different than anything my siblings and I have ever experienced before.

It was shells. The beach itself was shells. Millions of shells that were shattered in the exact fashion that would best cut and slice the feet of the youth.

We all had flip flops on, but that was not near the protection needed.

As I stepped from the kayak my foot sank into the horror a full six inches. Putting weight on that foot only furthered the piercing sensation that spanned up to my ankle. I quickly slammed my opposite foot down in an attempt to relieve the pressure and pain. This of course, as you might imagine, was somewhat of a vicious cycle. For the new foot was instantly in the same amount of pain as the last.  As I walked the only relief I ever felt was the hope that the moment I set a new foot down the pain would cease. It didn’t.

I walked for what seemed like five minutes and looking back I was only five feet from the boat.

James and Girl seemed immune to the shells as they started to explore the island. Strategically they started by walking away from the cabin. Smart kids.

They ventured off for nearly ten minutes as I stood on the shells paralyzed. I could have gone back to shifting the extreme discomfort and pain from one foot to the other all the way back to the kayak, but instead I elected to remain frozen standing among the shells and contemplating every decision that led me to that exact moment of my life. I regretted them all.

By the time my siblings returned I was nearly in tears.

"What are you moaning about?" James was the first one within earshot.

I was indeed moaning. Not out of pain-for my feet had long ago gone numb-but out of simple frustration.

"We have to kayak back, don't we?" The whining continued.

Girl approached the kayak, "Well that depends. Do you want to be arrested?"

"No."

"Shot?"

"No."

"Kidnapped and subsequently released in a 'Most Dangerous Game' scenario?"

"What the Fuck are you talking about?"

"No?" Girl motioned to the kayak. "Then get in."

The three of us clamored back in and paddled away from our last ditch effort at finding a place to sleep that night.


	7. Homeless in Fish Creek

The hour of paddling back was briefly interrupted by the discovery of a sand dune. In a lake where the depths were usually fifteen plus it was refreshing to be able to stand within the greatest expanse. We were fucking Jesus out there, walking on water.

By the time we got back and loaded the kayak back onto the car, the sun was beginning to set. We didn't know what the hell we were going to do, but we were going to get a good view out of this disaster.

Main street is the one road that runs through Fish Creek. And at the end of it on the western portion is Sunset Park. We strolled over there and sat on the rock wall bordering the edge of the rocky beach ten feet below.

The sun, as usual, was gorgeous. The park is situated such that as the sun disappears over the horizon it sits dead center on the lake shooting of expanses of color.

Blackness set in and the families slowly meandered home. We didn't have a home, so we sat. It only took about ten more minutes until mosquitoes joined us.

Walking back among the buildings and trees which I grew up around reminded me of all the childhood memories I had there. There was a wooded area to the left and I remember running through there with James around age ten. When Girl was old enough, she joined in.

Wind coming off the lake caused another memory to hit me. I remembered that I really had to piss. The sunset had distracted me and my only option was the beloved woods of my childhood.

I scampered into the trees and found an electrical box with Andre the Giant spray painted on it. Honestly I needed something as big as Andre the Giant to make me feel comfortable enough to do this, but this box would have to do.

This was my low point of the trip. There I squatted, mosquitos biting my ass, trying to keep my balance and I didn't even know where I would be sleeping that night. And on top of that, my entire childhood was being pissed on, literally pissed on, by me.

Shaking off any left overs I ran back to join James and Girl. They were discussing the only solution to our problem. I hadn't brought it up before because I already knew what the answer was.

Our car was already small. Not to mention all of the crap polluting the space. The seats, life jackets and paddles filled the trunk while our luggage filled half of the back seat. Now we needed enough space for three people to sleep.

We got back to the car and it was 8 o’clock. Safe to say we wouldn’t be falling asleep anytime soon. We elected instead to venture into the neighboring town to the drive in. No one cared what was playing, we just wanted somewhere to hang out late enough for us to be able to fall asleep in the confines of a four door sedan. The movies lasted until one in the morning and afterwards we drove back to Fish Creek and once again parked our car on a side street, backing it up into a tree.

The sleeping arrangements were as follows. Girl smashed the luggage to one side of the back seat as she sat in the center stretching her legs out onto the console into the front. James was able to put his seat back stretching his legs out underneath the steering wheel.

Then there was me. With all the luggage stacked behind my seat I had no choice but to leave my seat erect. With Girl's legs immediately to my left and James in the driver's seat I contorted my body in a dastardly feat. Sticking my left leg into the cup holders, my right wedged itself between the windshield and the dashboard.

I would love to tell you I slept, but I'm pretty confident that rest my body received was simply me losing consciousness due to exhaustion. I woke several times and with each time I hated my siblings more and more. They looked peaceful as they drifted ever so sweetly off to dreamland. It was fucking terrible.

At one point I _accidentally_ let my foot slip and l kicked James in the thigh. He jolted, shifted slightly and mumbled, "What makes your God better than my bacon sandwich God?" Fuck you and your amazing sounding dreams.

The morning finally came and we only had one night left on our trip. Luckily, the following day we wouldn't have to be homeless again and thankfully my parents would arrive by three o'clock and keep us from being completely destitute.

James and Girl went to the pool and I immediately switched seats in order to get a reasonable amount of sleep. But we had slept in a car and a reasonable amount is usually five minutes. I quickly followed behind them to the pool.

It was at the pool when Girl decided she was going to ruin our trip - I mean everything so far had gone perfectly!

"So I've had a sore throat this entire trip and it's only gotten worse." Girl sat at the edge of the pool looking across at us.

"Shit Girl, drink some water. I don't know, fuck." Future doctor, James Crooks everyone.

We stayed at the pool for another hour before setting out to find an actually licensed doctor. Funny thing about Door County is there are no hospitals or doctors offices, just clinics. These clinics were all closed for some terrible reason, they probably got another raccoon infestation. Yes, every clinic, individually had an assault via raccoons the night before. Just work with me here.

We ended up driving back down the peninsula towards Sturgeon Bay. In was in this town we learned that they had a dependable clinic where Girl could get tested, but I also learned that the luck of the Irish is a bunch of bullshit.


	8. Girl is Diseased and I Lose $7 (Guess Which One I Rank as the Greater Misfortune)

James and I sat in the waiting room as Girl was examined by some 86 year old doctor retired to the peninsula, but couldn't leave his work. Only a wife with an ultimatum could get a man into that situation.

The fellow patrons of the clinic included a rather large family that needed to accompany a child of the couple. There was also a young man sporting khaki shorts, polo and a backwards baseball cap. The traditional 'you can beat me up, but my daddy will sue you' look.

The woman that had directed us into the waiting room was still shuffling papers behind her desk. For the first time in my experience three kids, two of which barely above the drinking age, weren't given the side eye walking in. We were just three stupid kids that got themselves hurt on vacation. We were among our people.

Unfortunately, the only source of entertainment in the clinic was a static filled 7 inch television shoved off into a corner among a few scattered Legos and train set. This was monopolized by some horrifyingly animated children's program with three screaming toddlers dancing around it.

So James and I sat off on our own finding all the new celebrity scandals among the plethora of US Weeklys.

"So apparently Katy Perry has big boobs." James always did have a sharp eye and the inability of actually reading what the article was actually about. He picked himself up and pulled out a quarter. "How many dollar bills ya got on ya?" This is one of the most dreaded questions I hear on a regular basis.

We started flipping for dollars. Literally the stupidest gambling venture due to the statistical inevitability that the money will even out at the end. No skill, no strategy, just pure dumb luck.

I won the first flip and I triumphantly held my newly possessed dollar into the air. I won the second flip now in control of a whopping two dollars! I should have stopped there as James won the next five flips. The two dollars were donated back into the fund of James and I slowly but truly gave away the rest of my paper money. Shit.

But statistically this should even out, right? This was a game that you would be stupid to quit just because you were down a bit, yes? My mathematical background told me that if I threw down a few more dollars I would be able to break even. So out came quarters of my own. 

Emptying my coin purse I delicately stacked all the quarters into dollars. I had four more dollars and at least four more flips in a final attempt to redeem myself. Well, it only took four flips, because 45 seconds later, James had all my money. Overall, he won nine flips in a row. Bastard.

Another half hour passes as James flipped through the final stack of US Weeklys (only looking at the pictures of course) when Girl came out from the back room with the most ridiculous smile plastered on her face, "I have mono!" 

"Congraja-frickin-lations, you're not dying."

"Woo!" Girl threw her hands into the air as the 86 year old doctor walked away mumbling something about wives and their ultimatums. 

While Girl probably had mono, the doctor didn't want to spend any time doing a chest x-ray due to the treatment being the same regardless of the exact diagnosis. It was a vacation town, so he told her to get some sun and sleep.

This clinic was located in Sturgeon Bay which was the same town as our final hotel. It was the nicest hotel on our journey and considering it was the one our mom was paying for, is it really a surprise that it was the nicest? Our chance of getting murdered was at a trip low.

Having spent the entire afternoon surrounded by people, James and I were down for the count. Sidling our way over to the Subway next door we grabbed some subs and checked into our hotel.

This hotel room was new territory for us. No creepy two way mirrors, limited chance the hotel is run by murderers and we actually had BEDS to sleep in. We were actually going to sleep with a relative amount of safety! Unheard of.

There was only one problem that continued to haunt us in Sturgeon Bay. The fucking kayak. The hallways were not even close to being wide enough and we would be parading past the front desk just to get that far. But James as always had the optimal solution.

"Fuck it." He said. We were sitting in the hotel room eating our subs in a way closer to ravenous hyenas than actual humans. 

I looked up to find James staring out at the kayak still strapped to the roof of the car in the parking lot. I understood, "Fuck the kayak? I'm down." Honestly, it was laziness on my part.

Girl was dead on the other bed and murmured something about how she wasn't going to do anything anyway.

We kept the curtains open eyeing the kayak for the rest of the evening. But by eleven we stopped giving a shit, per usual.

And that was the whole trip. The next morning James and I had Girl stop on Pennisula Players road a few miles away from Fish Creek so we could gloriously ride in. After all the time spent training and preparing for the bike trip, I was happy that for at least a moment I could pretend that it all went according to plan.

We met up with Girl and checked into the vacation house we were staying at that week. My older sister, her family and my parents made it up later that day all asking about the bike trip. And boy, did we lie our asses off. 

Being the compulsive liar in the group I was the most animated storyteller as my arms flew threw the air recounting the countless miles we rode and the treacherous exhaustion we faced. This lie lasted a solid six hours, because while I'm a compulsive liar, I always come clean. In this case it took two beers and an arched eyebrow from my father.

I laughed, "Yeah you're right. We gave up after the first day."

And that's when the real storytelling began.


End file.
